Everyday Lunasea

We are traveling to Portland for Christmas. Last night, after bedtime, A. dragged out his sturdy TtFTE backpack and packed it for the trip. He is clearly his father's child. I try to pack at the last minute because what if I need something and I already packed it? G, on the other hand, will be packed almost a week ahead of time. A. is actually about 5 weeks ahead, so he beats us all. When he was done, he set it out in the front room, where we gather our suitcases the night before our trips. He is ready to go.

This morning he wanted to show us how well he'd packed by unpacking it, reviewing the items and packing it back up again.

Included:

• A baby afghan (handknit by Beastie. Upon review, he said, "I packed a baby blanket - I was confused and thought it was a blanket for a 5-year-old!")
• Two shower visors
• All of his coins ("In case Neighbor Preschooler gets into our house while we're gone and takes all my money" - Neighbor Preschooler has been known to sneak into our house, but only if the door's unlocked. So far.)
• Several sheets of Halloween stickers
• His self-penned 4th of July memoir, "A.'s Book of Fireworks"
• Two rubber sharks
• TtFTE slippers (even though we just bought him new SpongeBob slippers, he swears the Thomas ones could still fit if he wanted them to)
• a small Cookie Monster figure
• 3 dinosaur stamps
• Sally from Cars the Movie

He wanted to pack for Ben, too, but I pointed out that Ben may want to play with his favorite toys sometime in the next month and a half.

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We've been pretty diligent about teaching the boys to clean up messes they make. Ben tries, but our efforts are at least partially canceled out by his desire to imitate his older brother. Today when he dropped a bunch of yogurt-covered raisins on the floor, he told me quickly, "I'm sorry I didn't spill dat." Then: "I meant to do dat."